When Jimmy Carter—who passed away on Sunday—first ran for president in 1976, he made all the usual statements affirming his support for Israel. The Democratic Party platform on which he ran promised “a firm commitment to the independence and security of the State of Israel,” and recognized Jerusalem “as the capital of Israel.” The platform did not even mention the Palestinian Arabs. Yet when Carter ran for re-election four years later, he failed to win a majority of Jewish votes—something that had not happened to a Democratic presidential nominee in more than fifty years, and has not happened again in the nearly fifty years since then.
What happened between Carter and the Jews?
From Peanut Farmer to the White House
A former US naval officer, Carter ran his family’s peanut farming business in Plains, Georgia, in the 1950s before entering politics. He served two terms in the State Senate and then one term as governor. Georgia law prevented the governor from running for reelection, so Carter opted to compete for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.
Carter was something of a mystery to the Jewish community; he had no record on issues of Jewish concern. But his vice presidential running mate, US Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota, was known as a supporter of Israel. That helped Carter win approximately 70% of the Jewish vote, which was important in his extremely narrow victory over the incumbent president, Gerald Ford.
Carter defeated Ford by 11,000 votes in Ohio, a state with a Jewish population of 140,000. He beat Ford by 123,000 votes in Pennsylvania, where there were 400,000 Jews. If Ford had attracted enough Jewish votes to swing just those two states, he would have won the election.
Carter’s victory in New York State, with its large Jewish vote, was also critical. If just 145,000 Jewish voters had switched from Carter to Ford in New York, Ford would have won the Empire State and the national election.
“A Palestinian Homeland”
During his first year in office, President Carter repeatedly found himself at the center of controversies with the Jewish community. The first was in May 1977, when he gave an impromptu Bible talk at a Washington, DC, church. In his remarks, Carter appeared to reiterate classic Christian religious allegations against Jews. He later said his comments had been misunderstood.
In July of that year, veteran journalist Marvin Kalb reported that Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, sneeringly asked an Israeli official, “How will you like working with a president who owes nothing to the Jews?” Brzezinski denied the report, but Kalb told Wolf Blitzer—today CNN’s top news anchor, but in those days a Jerusalem Post correspondent—that his source was unimpeachable.
Brzezinski complained to Newsweek that the criticism constituted a campaign of “intimidation” by unnamed American Jews. But Carter himself later offered partial confirmation. In a 1991 interview, Carter recalled that in 1976, “I didn’t feel obligated” to the American Jewish community because during the primaries, “Jewish money” and most Jewish votes had gone to his rival, US Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Washington).
In the autumn of 1977, Carter invited the Soviet Union to co-chair a Middle East peace conference, which Israel strongly opposed because of the Kremlin’s extreme anti-Israel policies and support for Arab terrorism. Carter also called for “a Palestinian homeland” and “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians,” which at that time was the closest any US president had come to supporting a Palestinian state.
Carter’s effort to involve the Soviets was derailed, however, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem that November and launched negotiations with Israel. The Carter administration then assumed a central role in mediating between Egypt and Israel.
As the talks dragged on in the spring of 1978, there were repeated points of friction between Washington and Jerusalem. Carter repeatedly criticized Israel for permitting Jews to reside in Judea-Samaria and for not making more concessions to Egypt in the negotiations.
Carter’s Lebanon Fiasco
In March 1978, PLO terrorists based in Lebanon managed to reach the northern Israeli beachfront on rubber boats. After shooting Gail Rubin, a nature photographer (and niece of a US senator) whom they encountered on the beach, the terrorists hijacked an Israeli bus and murdered 36 of the passengers. At the time, it was the largest number of fatalities in a single Arab terrorist attack. To this day, the leader of the massacre, 19-year-old Dalal Mughrabi, is hailed as a national hero by the Palestinian Authority.
Israel responded by launching a major anti-terrorist operation in southern Lebanon. Within days, President Carter began pressing the Israelis to end the operation quickly and withdraw their troops.
In order to coax the Israelis to pull out, Carter proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force that he promised would prevent Arab terrorists from using southern Lebanon as a launching point for further attacks on Israel. Thus was born UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
With 10,000 armed soldiers patrolling an area of less than 350 square miles, UNIFIL represents the most dense deployment of peacekeepers anywhere in the world. Yet instead of protecting Israel from terrorists, UNIFIL turned out to be the terrorists’ de facto ally. While providing the illusion of “peacekeeping,” UNIFIL forces took no action against PLO terrorists in southern Lebanon and effectively served as human shields for the PLO, since Israel was reluctant to strike in areas where UN troops were situated.
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